Trying Windows Live Writer

Today I was exploring the Windows Live services when I stumbled upon Windows Live Essentials. It’s something similar to Google Pack, though Google Pack has much more richer collection of free apps whereas Windows Live Essentials is a collection of free desktop applications from Microsoft. Some the apps included are the replacements of current Windows applications.

Windows Live Mail replacing Windows Mail/Outlook Express
Windows Live Messenger replacing MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Windows Live Photo Gallery replacing Windows Photo Gallery
Windows Live Movie Maker beta replacing Windows Movie Maker

Additional to above Windows Live Writer is also included. It is a desktop blog-publishing app which features WYSIWYG authoring, photo-publishing, map-publishing, and video-publishing functionality. And the best part is that it supports all major blogging services including Blogger, Wordpress, LiveJournal, and TypePad, amongst others.

I just now installed Windows Live Essentials. I have started using Windows Live Mail, which gives me an outlook-like usability to my Hotmail mailbox and option to copy mails to my computer, and also I made Windows Live Photo Gallery the default photo viewer. Then I decided to try out the Writer with my blog hosted on Blogger, and hence this post. OK, I am clicking the publish button now …

Did you Bing?

www.bing.com

This is the latest web search offering from Microsoft, which calls it a Decision Engine as it is supposed to help make decisions apart from searching. Read here what Microsoft has to say about it.

Anyway I decided to bing the web and see what it can show me. From the first impression I feel Microsoft finally seems to be understand how things should work on internet. The interface is neat and simple, though bit heavy with graphics. The web search has some nice features like ability to suggest related searches, provide a preview to page contents without opening and also suggested alternatives for the search result. Shopping search is where I found Bing really good. It could help compare prices, show reviews, product pictures, and even offers cashbacks!! Also I liked the bird's eye view of the Bing Map search, which is based on the Microsoft Virtual Earth now called Bing Maps for Enterprise.

Overall impressive, I will not compare it with Google search yet. Mainly because today I was just poking around and didn't have anything sensible to search. I will be surely using bing as the second search option after google for my future searches. Lets see if bing can become the first option in days to come.

Forgotten hobby

Reading is a very favorite hobby of mine which had taken a back-seat for quite sometime now, except my reading the Times of India newspaper daily and reading news articles on ibnlive.in.com. Till a few years back I used to read novels very frequently, mainly from fiction (crime, detective, mystery) genre apart from a couple of biographies also. The part reason for this hobby of mine taking a back-seat are the genres themselves. You need continuous time to read them, as it's very difficult to break in between, at least for me.

But very recently I got a chance to bring back this hobby of mine to focus. On my journey back to New Delhi from Kolkata on Rajdhani express I had all the time in the world. So I decided to pick up a novel to read on the train from the Howrah station. I choose The Chamber by John Grisham. Genre wise (legal thriller) it was new to me. I did manage to read a substantial part of the novel in the train but finished the remaining part at my home after reach New Delhi. I liked novel and I think I am very soon going to buy some of the other titles by John Grisham. But more than that I very excited that I went back to my hobby after a long while.

Today while browsing the net on Google search (another hobby of mine), I found a nice site which has a good collection of some of the beautiful works. www.readprint.com. It claims to be a free online library with about 8000 online books by 3500 famous authors. Not bad! Though it also carries a strange warning on the homepage - "The surgeon general reports that having these many free online books at your disposal can be highly addictive."!! I do not think the addictive part is bad but surely I would avoid it as already due to my job I sit in front of computers for better half of my day, and if I start reading books online, I am sure my eyes will pop out in revolt. And anyway, I love buying books and preserving them, after reading, in my collection.

Go down to come on the top

I am referring to the recently concluded IPL T20 tournament in South Africa. After a close fight between Hyderabad Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers in the finals, Deccan Chargers became the champions. I usually do not follow cricket matches ball by ball because they are bit longer, even T20 format to some extent, but I do follow the results. Anyways that's not the reason for this post, something else caught my attention.

Both Hyderabad Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers are the teams which finished bottom of the table in the last edition of IPL, and this year they both did a perfect turnaround. Well lot of credit goes to there respective new captains Adam Gilchrist and Anil Kumble. Interestingly, in the last edition of IPL Rajasthan Royals who were virtually written off, surprised everyone by reaching the finals and eventually winning it also. Credit of that win surely goes to Shane Warne, captain and coach for Rajasthan Royals, who did a good job of making champions out of the underdogs. This year Royals were the defending champions and even better organized with a new sponsor, but couldn't re-create the magic.

Not very surprising these facts, might be even concidences, but rags to riches stories are not very uncommon. I guess winning is easier if you are at the bottom than at the top because one has nothing to loose at the bottom. Nevertheless it does need a huge amount of mental strength and determination come out as winner from behind. I guess Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders can have their hopes for the next year but it will need lot of hard work and regrouping!

What does your father do?

No, I don't want an answer from you. I guess most of us have answered this many times.

Actually reason for this post is that this question was asked to a kid in one of reality shows happening on the TV these days. The answer which came left me both amused and wondering. The name of the kid, the show or the channel is not important, what's important is here ...

Judge: What does your father do?
Kid: Morning walk, goes out in car ...
...
Judge: No, I was asking what is his profession or business?
Kid: Politics.

Incidentally kid's father was in the audience and camera was pointing towards him :) ... and he was equally amused as the rest.

Earth hour ... last 5 minutes!!

All lights and other electrical appliances are switched off at my home. I was standing in the balcony of my apartment and it looks quite dark outside with just the street lights on. It started to rain here (New Delhi, India) around 8:15 pm IST, so I enjoyed my earth hour with cool breeze and wind, and occasional natural lighting.

Hope we made a difference today for a better tomorrow.

Earth Hour 2009 ... are you participating?

Earth Hour, which started from Sydney in 2007, is an annual international event since 2008 to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. It calls for the participants (individuals, organizations and government) to switch off all non-essential lights and electrical appliances for just 60 minutes.

You do not have to plunge your world into darkness but just need to eliminate the non-essential usage of electricity for those 60 minutes. More of a symbolic event to spread the awareness and take the actions beyond those 60 minutes.

The next Earth Hour is scheduled on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm, your local time.

New Delhi and Mumbai are official participating cities from India in Earth Hour 2009 but you can participate from wherever you are.

Let's do our bit!



Earth Hour @ WWW:

Earth Hour Global site - http://www.earthhour.org/
Earth Hour: Vote Earth - http://www.voteearth2009.org/
Earth Hour India site - http://www.earthhour.in/

Earth Hour 2009 India Orkut community - http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community.aspx?cmm=60087030
Earth Hour 2009 India Facebook Community - http://apps.facebook.com/causes/241272/41494939?m=ddfe74a3

Slumdog Millionaire .... and the triple Oscars

Slumdog Millionaire ... a truly entertaining fantasy. If you have not experienced it yet then that's the first thing you should do instead of reading further. With 8 Academy Awards, 4 Golden Globe Awards and 7 BAFTA Awards, the film itself has lived its reel-life story in real-life.

I had seen this movie on its release in US and two things made a lasting impression on my mind that I am writing in retrospect. First is the unique story about how so many unrelated and tragic events can help Jamal, the protagonist, answer the tough quiz questions. Kudos to Simon Beaufoy. The second is the acting done by the child actors from the Mumbai slum, very effortless. And now there is a third, 3 Oscars coming to India!

The movie had its share of noise when it was released in India. There was a debate on the way slums and harsh realities of the life in the underbelly of Mumbai were shown. Then there was discussion about whether this was a India film or a foreign film. But why these questions? The simple fact is that its just a work of fiction with a sole motive to entertain the audience and maybe win few awards. This not the first time a story has been based on slums and what if it was; slums are a fact and every metropolis around the globe has an underbelly. I guess the natural social balance creates it. I think we should just be proud about the fact that its a good movie with India, and Indian cast and crew at its heart.

But as the saying goes ... all's well that ends well. The biggest moment for this movie would surely be the 8 Academy Awards, out of which 3 came to India! A R Rehman (2) and Resul Pookutty (1) gave us a real happy beginning to 2009!

13B, The Stoneman Murders .... and Gulaal

I hope Holi was colourful and exciting for everyone. Today I watched a movie which has its name related to the festival of Holi, though the storyline has nothing to do with the festival.

Gulaal ... a slow but fascinating storyline. The story revolves around student politics while also touching many other issues including campus ragging, caste biases among others in an interesting way. Set in the backdrop of varied Rajasthan terrain storyline is bit slow but is watchable till the end for the characters and actors who play them. Kay Kay Menon as always gives a wonderful performance.

Moving to another Kay Kay Menon movie ... The Stoneman Murders, which I had watched few weeks back. This one is based on the real-life serial murders of hapless footpath dwellers in Mumbai during early 80s. The Stoneman was a name given by the popular English language print media of Kolkata to an alleged serial killer who menaced the streets of that city in 1989. The Kolkata killings had a striking similarity with the Mumbai ones. Interestingly both the cases remained unsolved till date. Though the movie is based on these real-life incidents but since these were never solved, director Manish Gupta gives us his solution and its quite convincing also! A must watch.

13B ... Fear has new address. A horror flick after a long while but it was more of a thriller than horror. It does have some scary moments in the first half. The second half is bit of a drag. The suspense is held till the end but when its revealed it leaves so many unanswered questions that you are left wondering. You can watch it if you want to know what it is all about but overall bit average.